LITMIR.BIZ

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The zip was open to the waist and his stomach bulged over his belt. Paul looked at him with distaste.

      ‘In a way it’s kind of cosy in here, isn’t it?’ Colin said, hunting around on the back seat for a paper to read.

      ‘Speak for yourself.’ Paul eyed the debris. ‘If this is your idea of cosy I can imagine what your house looks like. It explains why your wife left you.’

      ‘Nah, silly cow was worse than I was. You should have seen the kitchen. Looked like a shagging bomb had hit it.’

      Paul could well imagine. He had seen the food stains on the walls and ceilings of Colin’s office. The man was a walking disaster area.

      He rubbed a hole in the breath misting the windscreen. Outside it was starting to lighten. Rain came down vertically, bouncing on the tarmac and rushing in the gutters. He sighed, misting the peep-hole, then looked at his watch for the umpteenth time.

      ‘When do you reckon we’ll be ordered to move?’ Colin asked.

      Paul shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

      They had been carrying out a series of surveillance tasks in their assigned area, but after their last one they had been directed to their present location to await retasking. It looked a prosperous residential street. The houses were mostly large, with trim hedges, large front gardens and no doubt even larger gardens to the rear.

      At the end of the street he saw the large, white shape of a Transit turn towards them. It cruised slowly closer, stopping some thirty yards away. With the water coursing down the windscreen it was impossible to see it distinctly, but he wasn’t bothered. It was probably just a plumber or decorator arriving early for a job in one of the houses.

      However, the next moment he made out the vague outline of figures bundling from the back of the van and running towards one of the larger houses.

      ‘What do you make of that?’

      Colin grunted, not lifting his eyes from the nude in the paper. Her lips were peeled back in a provocative smile, eyes half-closed, breasts thrust out as if someone had just shoved her hard in the small of the back and she was about to topple downstairs.

      ‘Colin, I’m fucking talking to you. Look.’

      Reluctantly Colin made his own peep-hole with his sleeve and peered through it at the house. He was just in time to see one of the men kick his way through the side gate.

      ‘Fucking hell!’ He dropped the paper. ‘It must be another part of the bloody exercise. That bastard! He sent us here for a break and then hits us with an incident. What the fuck do we do?’

      Paul thought for a moment. ‘Hang on,’ he said, playing for time while he ordered his thoughts. ‘They’re probably supposed to be terrorists. It’ll be a safe house or something.’

      ‘Don’t be daft. They wouldn’t go bundling in like that, kicking in doors if it was a safe house, would they?’

      Paul cursed himself silently. He liked to think of himself as the brighter of the two, but for once Colin was right.

      ‘Then they’re probably seizing the house to use as a base for the duration of an attack on the airport.’

      ‘Yeah!’ Colin chirped, becoming enthusiastic. All of a sudden their fatigue was forgotten and they sat up and kicked aside the debris littering the floor of the car as they tried to work out how they were expected to react.

      ‘Perhaps they’re planning to fire a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile from the back garden, or something?’ Colin said, his tongue hardly able to keep pace with his ideas.

      Paul thought about it and rubbed his chin. ‘Could be. We’re right under the main flight path all right. Yeah, that’s probably it.’

      ‘So what do we do then?’ Colin blinked at him, lost for a solution.

      ‘There’s too many of them for us to do anything. I reckon we report in and wait for backup.’

      ‘Good thinking. Will you do it or shall I?’

      Paul reached for the radio. ‘It’s my turn. You bogged up the last one.’

      He pressed the transmitter switch and spoke slowly and clearly, reporting the incident and requesting support. The message was acknowledged and when he had replaced the handset he sat back with a self-satisfied smile.

      It was a couple of minutes before the radio buzzed into life again and the voice of Don Headley rasped into the stagnant air of the car.

      ‘Echo Two, what’s all this about a van? Over.’

      Paul and Colin swapped grins. ‘He’s playing dumb,’ Colin whispered, as if Don himself were actually in the car.

      Paul repeated his report. There was another pause before Don came back and said, ‘It’s nothing to do with the ex.’

      ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Paul crooned easily. ‘Look, just log it down that we did the right thing and asked for backup. I know a bunch of terrorists when I see one.’

      Don sounded amused. ‘If that’s the case I suggest you get the hell out of there. I repeat, there are no exercise activities planned in your area for the rest of the day. Out.’

      The line went dead. Paul and Colin sat staring at one another.

      ‘Reckon they could be decorators or something? Builders perhaps. They looked fit buggers.’

      Paul laughed uneasily. ‘They can’t be terrorists, can they? Can you imagine it? Here in the middle of bleeding Southall?’

      Colin nodded and scrabbled around on the floor for his discarded newspaper.

      Suddenly, from inside the house they heard a muffled crack. They stared at each other again, but this time their faces paled.

      ‘Did you hear that?’

      ‘What the fuck was it?’

      There was a second crack, and then a third.

      ‘Oh, shit. That’s a bloody shooter.’

      Colin opened his door and started to pull himself out of the car. Paul snatched at his sleeve and tugged him back.

      ‘Where do you think you’re going, Humphrey sodding Bogart? In case you’ve forgotten, we don’t carry firearms.’

      ‘Well, we can’t just sit here.’

      Paul grabbed at the radio and called the station where the exercise control had been established.

      ‘Get me the guv. And be quick about it!’ he snapped.

      ‘He’s in a meeting. He told me he was not to be interrupted,’ the duty operator replied.

      ‘Listen, you tit, I don’t give a fuck. We’ve got a real incident here. There’s shooting in Bramley Road. Tell them to get some armed assistance here on the double. Got that?’

      There was a pause before the operator asked nervously, ‘This is part of the exercise, right?’

      Paul almost slammed the handset against the dashboard in frustration. ‘No, it fucking isn’t! This is for real. Now do as I say or I’ll crawl down the sodding air waves and rip your throat out!’

      ‘So it’s not part of the ex?’

      Colin swore and started out of the car again.

      ‘No,’ Paul persevered with all the self-control he could muster. ‘Now pass my message, right?’

      ‘Roger. Out.’

      He looked up to see that Colin was almost at the driveway, then quickly got out and rushed to join him. It was only when they were opening the gate that they noticed the man still standing beside the dirty white van. He appeared to be unconcerned by the gunshots from inside the house and when they caught his eyes he smiled pleasantly.

      ‘Hang

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